GoKawiilMusic is my constant companion. I'm almost always listening to a carefully curated playlist or new album. I wholeheartedly believe Spotify Wrapped Day should be a national holiday. So, as an AI reporter who has watched the so-called AI music industry grow over the past few years, I decided it was finally time to see how these artificial artists stack up. So I set a challenge for myself: I would only listen to AI-created music for a full week.
It was a very, very long week. AI music really takes the "art" out of artificial. But it was an educational and revealing experience, too.
The story of AI music is an old record that's been played before. Musicians have debated the role of technology in music creation for hundreds of years, from the introduction of recorded music using phonographs to synthesizers, autotune and production tech going mainstream. What makes this moment unique is that AI can create entire songs with very little human guidance. But the AI models that do so are built using music created by actual humans, creating a haze of legal woes and ethical chaos -- similar to that faced by other creators like writers, artists and filmmakers.
Music is one of the few universal cultural touchstones we have. Generative AI is rapidly changing how music is created, and in effect, changing our humanity with it.
A week of AI music
For the purpose of my self-imposed experiment, I only listened to songs that were verifiably altered by AI. I was pleased to see that the AI music sites offered a wide range of songs, but that initial excitement was short-lived. Most disappointingly, the vast majority of the pop music was shrill and squeaky -- the musical version of plastic, in my opinion.
A lot of the trending songs were electronic music, which I'm sure EDM fans would've appreciated more than me. It just reminded me of a canon event every young person experiences: Being stuck at a house party where the person on the aux is "an aspiring DJ." The house and techno styles just reinforced the idea that I was listening to robotic AI music. It made it hard to enjoy when I knew there wasn't even the illusion of human creation behind the songs.
I fared much better with country and folk music, which had a big focus on the instrumentals and an acoustic sound. A lot of it sounded like it could've been by Noah Kahan, Kacey Musgraves or Luke Combs. This is where I started to relax into my typical music habits -- getting hooked by a particularly appealing song on a first listen, adding those interesting songs to a playlist that I would eventually prefer over exploring new music as I grew more comfortable and attached to my favorite songs.
Then there was the truly weird, wacky AI music. Beyond Suno, there is an entire universe of unique AI music on sites like YouTube. My favorite (or the least worst one?) was the 8-minute Game of Thrones disco, complete with a music video, while my editor favored the Lord of the Rings version. I found the songs engrossing, probably because they're music videos, not just songs, with haunting, AI slop visuals.
I have no idea what's going on in this Game of Thrones music video, where white walkers dance like it's the 1970s, but it was something. WickedAI/Screenshot by CNET
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